GMA IAR - September 2009

A blue-ribbon line-up of speakers will be featured at GMA’s one-day, one-of-a-kind Sustainability Advantage Conference October 5 in Dallas.

Opening keynoter is Roger Ballentine (pictured left), president of Green Strategies Inc. and former chairman of the White House Climate Change Task Force and deputy assistant to President Clinton for Environmental Initiatives. Ballentine also currently teaches energy and climate policy at the Harvard Law School and is a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.

The closing keynote session features a panel on ways for corporations to communicate sustainability initiatives and improvements. Featured are Sabrina Vigilante, director, Americas and Asia Pacific Sustainable Value Chains and Sustainable Agriculture Division, The Rainforest Alliance, and Susan Wickwire, branch chief, energy supply and industry, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Vice President for Sustainability Chip Jones of Dean Foods moderates the panel.

Some 150 retailers are expected to be on hand, especially for the late-afternoon reception. The 6 p.m. reception is co-sponsored with the Retail Industry Leader Association’s Environmental Sustainability and Compliance Conference, which begins at the same site, the Embassy Suites Dallas-Frisco Hotel, the next day.

The deadline for registration has been extended to October 4 to enable CPG environmental sustainability, supply chain, marketing, sales and operations leaders to attend this event. For on-line registration for the conference, click here.

Joan Kavanaugh, vice president of corporate purchasing for Aldi will be the featured speaker at the two-day GMA Chairman’s Advisory Council (CAC) meeting October 22-23 at the Chicago Marriott Schaumburg.

CAC Chairman Si Brown (president and CEO, Bruce Foods Corporation) said that in addition to Aldi Foods, other speakers will include ATKearny’s Joy Peters on the GMA Strategic Plan and U.S. Foodservice’s Patrick Mulhern on doing business with his firm. Discussions on new GMA research on sales agency utilization and a working lunch with a roundtable discussion are also planned.

What do penny-pinching consumers, a burgeoning multi-cultural marketplace and aging Baby Boomers mean to CPG companies? How can companies best leverage shared POS data and drive consumer loyalty? What’s the latest on product innovation and shopper marketing?

These are a few of the subjects that will be examined in the upcoming GMA Merchandising Sales and Marketing Conference (MSM) November 2-4 at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix.

The opening general session features an examination of the New Age of Affordability with panelists Tracy VanBibber, senior vice president and chief customer solutions officer at the Dial Corporation; Grant LaMontagne, senior vice president and chief customer officer, The Clorox Company; Kari Alldredge, principal, McKinsey & Company; and Katie Doyle, principal, also of McKinsey.

Sponsorship opportunities still exist. Contact Jonathan Downey at 202.395.2945 or jdowney@gmaonline.org.

Join your CPG colleagues and leading retailers at this always popular event. Sign up today for the Phoenix conference using on-line registration.

GMA Director of Sales Promotion Brian Lynch said Booz & Company has been named to conduct a survey into shopper marketing trends that will be released during a special presentation at the MSM Conference November 2-4 at the Arizona Biltmore, Phoenix.

A project of the GMA Sales Committee, the survey will provide insights to help industry trading partners influence purchase behavior and improve the in-store experience for the consumer.

Booz & Company will partner with SheSpeaks, a leading insights and advocacy network, in the project.

The number of recalled products has more than doubled since 2000, according to Deloitte Consulting LLP, which has been named to conduct the joint GMA/FMI study on the execution of product recalls in the industry. The firm said its analysis estimates that the cost of recalls in the industry is between $8 and $12 billion.

Calling the current recall products process a “highly complex, regulated and meticulous process,” Deloitte executives said the study would examine opportunities and challenges at both the supplier and retailer levels.

The new GMA/FMI Trading Partner Alliance met immediately prior to the kickoff of the GMA Executive Conference earlier this month to hear welcoming remarks from GMA Industry Affairs Council Chairman Rick Wolford (president and CEO of Del Monte Foods); FMI Industry Relations Committee Chairman Ed Crenshaw (CEO of Publix Super Markets Inc.); GMA President and CEO Pamela Bailey and FMI President and CEO Leslie Sarasin.

Sean Stephan, senior director of packaging sustainability for Walmart International, examined the global retail-ready packaging initiative. GMA Senior Vice President for Industry Affairs Stephen Sibert and FMI Vice President, Industry Collaboration, Education and Research Patrick Walsh outlined the 2010 workplan: sustainability, product safety and recall, hunger, nutritional standards, shelf-ready packaging, and the framework for New Ways of Working Together.

Chairman, President and CEO Ric Jurgens of Hy-Vee Inc.(left) led a team from Hy-Vee, a 79-year-old employee-owned cooperative operating 225 stores in the Midwest, in a discussion on customer engagement at the GMA Sales Committee Meeting held in connection with the GMA Executive Conference August 31-September 1. Jurgens also is the new chairman of the Food Marketing Institute.

Sales Committee Chairman Grant LaMontagne (The Clorox Company) and Vice Chair Tracy VanBibber (The Dial Corporation) presented a scorecard of committee projects completed and plans for future objectives. Tom Blischok, president, consulting and innovation at IRI, presented a sneak peek of the conference panel discussion on the new value-seeking consumer.

Presentations on the IAC's 2009 priority issues, which include recall management, sustainability and retail-ready packaging, comprised the agenda for the meeting of the Industry Affairs Council held in conjunction with the GMA Executive Conference earlier this month. New GS1 U.S. President and CEO Bob Carpenter presented his initatives for GS1 in the coming years and discussed how GMA and GS1 can work together. Other speakers included IAC Chairman Rick Wolford (Del Monte Foods), Pamela Bailey (GMA), Chris Baldwin (Kraft Foods), Stephen Sibert (GMA), Steven Swartz (McKinsey), Vince Byrd (J.M. Smucker Company) and Sean Stephan (Walmart International).

A record number of company representatives attending the Associate Member Council (AMC) meeting held before the GMA Executive Conference discussed AMC strategies for 2010, according to Council Chairman Greg Smith, KPMG’s global lead partner for Walmart and Warbug Pincus, and a member of the Consumer Markets Global Steering Committee.

Speakers included Alvin Rohrs, president and CEO, Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE); Jill Johnson, GMA Industry Affairs director; and Bill McGowan, COO, Feeding America.

Discussions included ways the vast resources available through the AMC member companies could be made more accessible to GMA member companies.

GMA’s Direct Store Delivery (DSD) Committee met earlier this month in Chicago to hear from O4 Corporation, Intermec and Rehrig Pacific Company on their request for information (RFI) proposals on forthcoming research into DSD’s impact on achieving the perfect shelf. The committee also heard updates on the Supply Chain Consortium DSD Survey findings and the latest on the GMA/FMI Supply Chain Conference by Dale Brockwell, senior director, industry relations, supply chain, Kraft North America. Rehrig Pacific Company sponsored the meeting dinner. DSD Committee Chair Ann Dozier, vice president, strategic industry initiatives, The Coca-Cola Company, said the next meeting will be held in Chicago in December.

Know Where the Purchase Decision Is Made

By CEO John Dranow & Candace Adams, President

Global Retail Strategy

SmartRevenue

In the past, big brands and big media influenced shoppers to make their purchase before they reached the store because there was limited competition among brands. Today, due to product proliferation, media fragmentation and practically unlimited information, an environment has been created in which about half of all decisions are made at the point of purchase.

Economic volatility and changing values have created an uncertain future for the consumer goods market. Shoppers are investing in cost-saving products and participating in low-cost activities, and the recession has left households saving rather than spending any spare money. Consumers are seeking products that will last for the long run and ensure better health, family, community and environment.

According to a recent survey SmartRevenue conducted among key executives, only 30 percent of total revenue-generating expenditures are optimally hitting demand-creation targets for the products or services being promoted. These executives say that to be competitive, marketing needs to be more focused than ever before. Products and services are insufficiently researched, and planning does not match actual demand. Pricing is not optimized to maximize sales or profit by channel, retailer, category, brand or segment. Alignment of manufacturer and retailer is insufficient to drive growth volume. Promotions do not always effectively drive incremental revenue profit, planograms are typically unshoppable, and display strategies are often ineffective.

It’s time for a new approach.

What SmartRevenue is finding is that many marketers do not understand the difference between the consumer and the shopper. To address this challenge, we developed the “Path to Purchase” concept, which begins with knowing where the purchase decision is made. Path to Purchase starts with identifying the consumer by demographics, segments and needs, while identifying the shopper as the one shopping for herself and/or for others. The consumer goods marketer then must develop actionable pre-store media strategies and tactics to target pre-store decisions, then create actionable in-store strategies and tactics to target in-store decisions. The understanding of this process enables optimized segment-based marketing and merchandising that properly targets all decision-making.

In order to drive consumer and shopper innovation, brand leadership and profitability in the Path to Purchase concept, a consumer goods marketer must go through two phases. Phase 1 involves planning, shopper insight development and finding opportunity in high-value strategies and tactics. In Phase II, the marketer develops a strategic action plan and department-specific plans, and executes.

Consumer goods marketers have a lot to think about, even in the best of times, including shopper loyalty, the overall shopping experience, product quality, price/value, assortment and much more. In these more challenging times, these marketers also must understand the importance of selling to shoppers where and when they are most receptive. Programs like Path to Purchase can help build the insights needed to capture or recapture market share.

Contact: SmartRevenue